This is the first in what I hope will be a series of dispatches from or about spiritual places in India. I don't know where it will lead, but I hope it will be enjoyable!
Brahma Ghat, Pushkar
We arrived in Pushkar in time to prepare for Shabbat, which we've been observing every week during our trip (okay, we missed one - it was an oversight, ok?). This has been a wonderful experience. Obviously, it's hard to cook your own meals, but we've been lighting candles, finding delight in creation, not spending money (arranging payment for food to be made on account), and trying to not make anyone else do any work on our behalf. I will write more about Shabbat in India after a few more weeks of practice to tell you more about our experiences. Suffice it to say, it was a great way to wrap up what had been a hectic week.
The Setting
Pushkar is home to roughly 1000 temples and 51 bathing ghats (steps down to the water), including one of each dedicated to Brahma, the god of creation, and one of the big three in Hinduism. Apparently, these are the only such dedicated to Brahma in all of India, and probably the world. The lake in the middle of town is said to be where Brahma dropped a lotus from heaven and performed a yagna or fire sacrifice. I will leave the details of the story and the research to those interested - you can stick the keywords in google as well as I can! NOTE: Brahma is different from Brahman...
A Quick Prayer
I visited the Brahma sacred sites yesterday, to see what I could see. Worship is a far sight different from what we're used to in western synagogues or churches, at least from my outsider's perspective. A visit to a temple is almost cursory: offer a quick prayer, ring a bell, give your flower/sugarcube offering to the priest, and that's about it. The kids were offered some of the sugar candies, and (holy lake?) water was ladled into the mouths of some of the faithful. Some lingered, contemplating the shrine for a few moments before moving on to the next one. The Brahma temple houses a number of shrines, including a couple of underground "cave" shrines to Shiva (another of the main triumverate), complete with a stone lingum and yoni platform, over which I was instructed to pour water. I wish I could have lingered at these more, but they were cramped caves and a line was forming. The practice, anyway, was to pay your respects and move on along the circuit.
Clarity, It's In The Water
It wasn't until I was directed* to the bathing ghat that the focus of worship became clearer to me. At the ghat, I was led through a puja involving a series of mantras, hand washings and swishings-about of a plate with: vermilion & sandalwood pastes, rice, sugar, flowers, a coconut and some water. After it was all said and done, the pastes and rice were smeared together and dotted on my forehead, and an ochre/saffron-colored string tied around my wrist. The ceremony of the thing did what it was supposed to do, I suppose. It cleared my mind to think about the wonder of creation and take in my surroundings. In sharp contrast to the perfunctory nature of the shrine visit, Indians of all stripes were mindfully performing variants on what I had done, including taking handfuls of what by all accounts was filthy lake water into their mouths, and stripping to their shorts to dip in the lake. Water was a key element in all of this.
A part of my own ceremony that struck me as particularly poignant was the dabbing of water on my eyes, my "third eye", my shoulders and my chest, in turn cleansing my sight, my mind, my body, and my heart. The healing power of water (as I'm sure will be reiterated on the banks of the Ganges) is a strong and powerful theme here. Cleansing of the body transcends metaphor to directly become cleansing of the spirit. This idea, of course, is not unique to Hinduism. You need only look as far as the mikvah or baptismal font to see strong, if not exact parallels in western religion. Water; the ultimate detergent. Water; elixir of life. Water.
*Yes, I did have a student priest attach himself to me, and after his protests of 'no money' nonetheless extracted a small monetary offering. I am of two minds regarding this: on the one hand, I feel its a tad gauche to charge for a sacred site and opportunistic to milk hapless visitors for 'donations', as it's difficult to know whether they are indeed that. On the other hand, I did see his official priest card and I do feel it appropriate to pay a token sum for intruding on a holy place. After all, our places of worship ask for periodic offerings (call them memberships, tithes or what you like) to sustain them - it only makes sense that a place of pilgrimage does this on the spot, as it were. Anyhow, I'm okay with it!
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2 comments:
Hmm to some extent I agree, at home we pay a small donation to the church at mass, but the operative word there is donation. I felt cheated, not out of the money, but out of the lovely experience. I had placed all my trust in this young priest, relishing the novelty of that moment, somebody taking time out of their day to teach a tourist something about their town. Then I was hit with the full force of Indian reality, nothing comes for free. It was the way it was done, and the exorbitant amount that he asked for, 500 rs!10euro!which is not much at home, but a hell of a lot here. What annoyed me more is the fact that I am living in India and not earning much money at all-let's just say that this money is 5 hrs work for me! Anyway, I was just about to write in my blog about it, so said I would share my view :)
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